Bury Her Deep (25 page)

‘The Miss Mortons left, Captain Watson,’ said Nicolette, when she had cleared her throat. ‘When was it now? They weathered that thrilling night in July, all right. What was it that drove them off in the end?’

‘Mrs Gilver is planning to address the Rural too, you know, Captain,’ said Lorna, cutting into Vashti’s speech in a rather quavering voice.

‘A fellow artist?’ said Alec.

‘Not at all,’ said Nicolette. ‘Don’t let the hat fool you, Captain Watson. She is doing some sociological research.’

‘Well, hardly that,’ I said.

‘Darling, if you went as far as the charmless Molly at our place, I’d call it sociology, wouldn’t you?’

‘
Anthro
pology, even,’ said Vashti and they both tittered.

‘Did you get any joy from Molly?’ Nicolette asked me, blithely unconcerned by any thoughts of her servant’s indiscretion.

‘Not anything very useful,’ I assured her anyway. ‘She tends rather to the melodramatic.’

‘Ah yes, her famous ordeal in the privy yard,’ said Vashti.

‘Don’t you use watercolours then?’ said Lorna in a loud voice.

‘It paid off handsomely for her with the adventure last night,’ said Nicolette, before Alec could answer. He was looking rather wildly from right to left, like a spectator at a tennis match, trying to follow all the conversational threads at once.

‘You seem very unsympathetic to poor Molly,’ I said to Vashti.

‘So would you be if you had to eat her cooking,’ said Vashti, making me laugh in spite of myself. ‘And besides,’ she went on, ‘a moonlight walk! I ask you!’

‘We thought a visit to a prison cell might shake the nonsense out of her once and for all,’ said Nicolette, even less sympathetically.

‘Prison cell?’ said Alec, as Captain Watson would have, I was sure.

‘Our tenant farmer got himself arrested and locked up last night,’ said Nicolette. ‘The most excitement there’s been at Luck House since Irvine sat on the cat.’

‘Yes, it was odd, the Miss Mortons going off in high dudgeon like that,’ said Lorna frantically.

‘But they let him go again,’ said Nicolette, just as though Lorna had not spoken.

I took pity at last. Saving Lorna from mortification and Alec from the challenge of remembering what Captain Watson should know and what should puzzle him, I turned the conversation adroitly to the coming party (thinking regretfully, as I did so, that the adroit turning of difficult conversations was an unmistakable sign of creeping age).

‘It’s going to be very romantic,’ Vashti said. ‘
Love
is the theme.’

‘Because you are beloved, darling Lorna,’ said Nicolette.

‘And very loving to us too. So what else could the theme be?’ said Vashti. ‘We adore themed parties, Captain Watson. Life, don’t you think, should be full of celebration. Hallowe’en, St Valentine’s, Easter, Beltane. If you add some well-spaced birthdays the year can be full to the brim.’

‘Beltane?’ said Alec.

‘May day,’ Nicolette explained. ‘An old Scots word. You’ll get used to them, if you settle here, and I do hope you will.’

‘But don’t mislead the Captain, Vashti,’ said Lorna, sounding mild but determined. ‘You make Luckenlaw sound like an endless whirl. We don’t actually have parties all that often.’ Vashti, who had been looking almost transported, now slumped down again.

‘True,’ she said. ‘Money is such a bore. Still, we do our best, don’t we, Niccy?’

‘We always have and we always will,’ said Nicolette, making it sound like a motto, her valiant tone quite at odds with the long cigarette holder and the clattering bangles.

‘You must excuse me, Captain Watson,’ I said, although I was loath to drag myself away. ‘As Lorna said, I am busy with my research, and I have a full complement of interviews to conduct this afternoon.’

‘On what particular topic?’ said Alec.

‘Managing the household budget,’ I replied. I looked around the cottage living room at the fully stocked drinks tray and the meagre packet of bread and pot of jam on the table. Alec followed my eyes and smiled.

‘I should serve better as a recipient of your advice than a provider of handy hints,’ he said, and I could see, out of the corner of my eye, Lorna regarding him with determined pity, and dreaming I am sure of just how many home comforts she could bring his way. ‘As long as I have my art,’ he went on, ‘I am happy. And something tells me that my art is going to flourish here at Luckenlaw. I’d like to speak to some of the farmers. Starting with that tenant of yours, Mrs Howie. Something about the clash of the two worlds, you know. The rolling empty fields and the closed prison cell. If I could capture that, I’d have something worth having. Do you think he would let me sketch him? Do you think I might sketch all the farmers? Such faces they have – etched with toil, landscapes in themselves, don’t you see?’

Vashti and Nicolette just managed to keep their countenances at this sudden outburst of artistic nonsense while Lorna, predictably, looked transfixed. I could only marvel and envy; how much easier and more fun to stride about with a sketchpad and spout gibberish that no one had to be convinced by than to drone on about budgets and have to make sense while one did so.

13

The trim grey cottage had smoke curling prettily out of its chimney and beads of moisture in its lighted kitchen window, hinting that someone was already busy inside ‘getting the tea’. I knocked diffidently and prepared my little speech once more.

Mrs Gow could easily have written the talk, pamphlet, article or indexed volumes for me, that much was clear from the outset; her kitchen was sparkling, her larder pantry – which she took care to let me see as she went to fetch potatoes to peel – was stocked as though for a siege and the pastry she was rolling out was flat, smooth-edged and perfectly oval. I imagined that only tremendous prudence and skill could produce such snug plenty on a cattleman’s pay packet.

‘I manage my budget jist fine,’ she said, confirming this impression. ‘Mind you, there’s many a lass tryin’ tae run a hoose wi’ no more sense than a day-old chookie, and doubtless they’d be in sore need o’ some help, madam.’

‘I rather wonder that you don’t come along to the meetings,’ I said. ‘You could pass on your wisdom there, for I believe that some quite young girls have joined, looking, as you say, for a bit of advice from their elders.’

‘Aye well,’ said Mrs Gow, turning a potato round and round under her scraper as a coil of peel grew and fell onto the paper. ‘It micht o’ been guidance they were looking for, madam, but that’s no’ what they got. Those poor lasses, and then everybody up and sayin’ they didna believe them.’ She tossed the potato into a pot, wiped her hands on her apron front and selected another one.

‘You believe them, at least,’ I said.

‘I do that,’ she told me. ‘For I saw him mysel’.’

‘No!’ I said, thankful that I had managed not to say yippee. ‘Did you tell anyone? If one of the girls had had you backing her up  . . .’

‘It wisna then,’ she said. I knew what she would say next. ‘It was the nicht o’ the meetin’ in July I saw him. I stopped goin’ after that.’

‘You stopped going right then?’ I said. I was sure it was August.

‘Well, I went once more. I felt sorry for that nice schoolteacher, if I’m honest. I was feart that after what happened in July she’d be there all on her own the next time and so I went back just the once, to be polite like. Gowie dropped me doon there in the cart and came back at the end to pick me up again.’

‘But the August meeting was as busy as ever,’ I said.

‘It was,’ said Mrs Gow shaking her head and sucking her teeth. ‘And so I said to myself they could carry on without me.’

‘Do you mind if I ask  . . . ?’ I said, then forced myself away from the tantalising question of the Wisconsin preacher’s wife. ‘Did the stranger actually get you, Mrs Gow?’

‘No fear. He didna even see me, madam. I had come straicht roond the back to my wee patch here, thinkin’ to catch some of they blessed snails that were eatin’ up my lettuces as quick as I could get a row in. It was that bricht with the moon that nicht, you know. And I seen him, jist
ripplin’
across thon field as if the devil was after him. Well, there’s only one farm up there and so I kent exactly what he was up to. I’d left Mary – young Mrs Torrance – no’ a minute afore to carry on to the farm, and so I come in the back door and took doon a pot and ladle, then back out I went and skelped that pot bottom like it was a cheeky bairn. I reckoned that would fricht him.’

‘It would certainly fright me, if I wasn’t expecting it. I take it he didn’t catch Mrs Torrance then?’

‘Your guess is as guid as mine,’ she said. ‘Gowie and me – Mr Gow that is, my husband – took aff along the lane and here but did we no’ meet Mary comin’ back, askin’ what all the noise was.’

‘Well, bravo,’ I said. ‘You seem to have sent the fellow packing with your pot and spoon brainwave. Well done you, Mrs Gow.’

‘I’m no’ so sure,’ she said. ‘Mary’s hair was all hingin’ doon and there was a streak o’ dirt across her face, but she said she’d never seen a thing, nor heard nothin’ either, exceptin’ my racket.’

Just like Mrs Hemingborough, I thought to myself. Almost exactly the same.

‘I canna get used to it, I suppose,’ said Mrs Gow. ‘I’ve kent Mary a’ her life, for Gowie worked to her faither since we were first wed, and I still think of her as a bairn – I never had my own, madam – so when it comes to bein’ stared doon like that and as good as told you’re haverin’, not to mention bein’ warned to keep your mooth shut aboot it! To think o’ her standin’ there, sayin’ how she’d hate to have to make changes aboot the place, when there had been enough loss and leavin’ already, since the happy days of childhood. Oh, she has a silver tongue on her, like all o’ them, richt enough.’

‘I’m not sure I follow you,’ I said. ‘
Mrs
Torrance said all this? About the halcyon days of yore and all that. Do you mean that the farm belonged to Mary’s family?’

‘Aye, Drew Torrance is from over Ladybank way. A cousin o’ some kind, come to work to his uncle since he had four brothers at home and there was only Mary here. And it’s just as well he did come too. You’ll no’ have heard about the fire, will you?’

‘Someone did say something about a bad fire,’ I said, vaguely remembering. ‘I can’t remember if I knew it was Wester Luck.’

‘The house went up like a lum,’ said Mrs Gow, ‘and it spread to the byres too. Beasts screamin’ like bairns, the horses breakin’ their legs in their stalls, and jist us wi’ a poor few buckets tryin’ to stop it. What a nicht that was. Like hell on earth, madam, if you’ll excuse me puttin’ it that way. Just like hell on earth. Mary’s mother was ill wi’ it after, the smoke and all, for her chest was ayeways bad in the winter at the best o’ times. She went richt doonhill and old Gil – Mary’s faither – was no time ahint her. So thank the Dear for Drew Torrance, is all I can say, even if he is turnin’ oot to be a sicht harder to keep in check than Mary bargained for.’

Here, perhaps, was a trace of what Alec was set to sniff out. I went after it like a bloodhound.

‘Hard to manage?’ I said. ‘Does he go out drinking and gambling then?’

‘Och, no,’ said Mrs Gow. ‘Nothin’ like that and to give Mary her dues, she’s no’ one of they soor-plooms who’d have us all damned for a game o’ whist. No’ like some I could mention.’ At the thought of – I guessed – the Blacks and Frasers, Mrs Gow seemed to regret even saying what she had. ‘No, Mary’s had a hard time of it and Drew was a godsend.’

‘Hear, hear,’ I said. ‘And if you’ve helped them through all you have, I can see why your palm might itch if you thought Mary was telling fibs to you and making you appear foolish in front of your husband. But, Mrs Gow, perhaps she
didn’t
see the stranger. Why would she lie about it, after all?’

‘Och, she was ayeways her mither’s daughter,’ said Mrs Gow. ‘Gil was a fine man but Mary’s mother – she was Mary too – was a gey queer buddy. Ask anyone and they’d say the same, madam; it’s no’ just me.’

‘So you fell out and stopped going to the Rural together?’ I guessed, smarting on Mrs Gow’s behalf, for why should it be the elder who withdrew from the field if their quarrel meant they could not rub along together?

‘No, no, nothin’ like that,’ said Mrs Gow. ‘I jist got scared, plain and simple. I had thocht this stranger fellow – if he was real – was goin’ after girls wi’ nobody to look out for them – Annie, and Elspeth and thon funny one up at Luck Hoose; they’re a’ girls alone, but if he was startin’ in on the likes o’ Mary Torrance wi’ her man there beside her, I wasna for takin’ a chance that he micht come after me.’

I must have failed, as is quite usual, to keep a poker face and I fear Mrs Gow saw the quick look of incredulity I could not hide.

‘Oh, I ken what you’re thinkin’,’ she said. ‘Why would anyone come oot on a dark nicht and run across fields tae pinch me where he shouldna?’ I grinned at her. ‘Aye, well,’ she said, but she refused to expand any further.

Her meaning became clear however when I drew level with a young woman who turned out to be Mrs Torrance while I was trudging home. She was bound for Hinter Luck, she said, taking a fat duck to Mrs Hemingborough in exchange for some bacon. I remembered her vaguely from the meeting and, although she had merged into the crowd somewhat that night, as I subjected her now to a brief spell of close study out of the side of my eye, I am sorry to say that I thought the dark stranger must have had some compelling reason of his own for setting his sights on this good lady on a night when so many other females were tramping home across the countryside besides her. I had already wondered at his taste in regard to the Mistresses Hemingborough and Fraser but Mary Torrance was the biggest mystery of all and I agreed with Mrs Gow that if
she
was tempting then no woman alive was safe from him.

She was, I should guess, in her thirties, thick and sturdy, with a face far from hinting at faded beauty like the faces of most farmwomen I have seen – a country girlhood being as conducive to pretty looks as a country life is certain to wear them out in the end. Mary Torrance’s countenance, in contrast, must have seen her through a plain babyhood, childhood and girlhood and must, if anything, be less of a burden now when, husband secured, all thoughts of fascination were past her. Her hair grew low on her brow which itself jutted out like an overhanging cliff above dark eyes and was balanced although not by any means softened by a boulder of a chin supporting a short, no-nonsense mouth whose lower lip covered its upper, lending her whole face an expression of pugnacity which, although I am sure it was quite accidental, would have seen off most ravagers from a field away.